Southern characters had been enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures which refined intellect could accumulate; we had wisely built upon foundations of public virtue; our institutions had the permanency of age and respectability, and exhibited everywhere the fullest maturity of athletic vigor. The paroles of Southern soldiers amnestied them from arrest for past military offences, but the clothing which their poverty obliged them to wear marked the target at which the lawless and vicious shot at their will. Personal and State rights were abridged until nothing was left of the sovereignty of the barren commonwealths or the enthralled individual. There were no juries of the vicinage but negroes; and daily the broken-hearted people were unwittingly aggrandizing rapacious officials. To the most depraved of the negroes the carpet-baggers were constantly appealing with arguments that stirred their blood. This narrative will not in an historical sense deal with the subject of reconstruction; from its want of compactness and continuity it would prove inefficient as a lesson or a guide. We present, however, imperfect portraits of a few men and women who were unfortunately in the pathway of the storm that stripped the husbandman of the fruits of his labor, the Southron of his liberty, stifled the cries of the distressed, and rendered the tenures of property unstable and insecure. In no conjuncture in which this paroxysm of politics placed the former masters of slaves, did they abate their care and zeal for their betterment. Monuments of brass and sculptured stone are not sufficiently enduring to memorialize the virtues of the negroes of the old plantations of the South, who watched and waited for the avenging arm of Providence to right the wrongs of old master. May God's mercy rest and abide upon this scattered remnant, that, like autumn's leaves in the forest, have been blown hither and thither by the wraith of the tempest. [Illustration] THE BROKEN SWORD. CHAPTER I. LOOKING BACKWARD.